Georgia Caraway: Vintage cowboy boots spur love at first sight

My dear readers, I wanted you to be the first to know, I have
fallen in love - again. Last month I wrote about my "Georgia" sheet
music collection (some of you may have considered this to be the
ultimate in egocentric behavior). This month, I am writing about my
newest passion.

I wish I could blame this intense emotion on this
month-for-lovers, with Valentine's Day falling in the middle, but
alas, it isn't so.

All it took was one soleful glance across a crowded antique mall
and, well, I surrendered to the siren call. Tall and slender, well
made, and at a glance I could tell, well heeled. They molded my
feet perfectly. Their shafts were covered in
deep-blood-red-and-white-stitched patterns. My heart's desire? A
fully restored pair of vintage cowboy(girl) boots.

Who was that Cupid who shot that arrow into my heart? None other
than Al Graham, the newest purveyor of tantalizing goods at the
Western Heritage Gallery. Al had moved 99 pairs of these vintage
temptations from his personal collection in Austin to the gallery,
just waiting to share space in some unsuspecting guy or gal's
closet. As soon as I tried them on, I declared, "They are
mine!"

Al assured me that because of his careful restoration, my boots
would outlive me. I told him that might be so, but I would wear
them in my grave so that they would be with me forever. Such was
the intensity of my emotion. I was especially spurred on when Al
also assured me that if I ever went honky-tonking, some tall, dark
and handsome cowboy would approach me and say, "Nice boots." Now
that is a pickup line to which a gal might succumb. What could I do
but whip out my Visa card and make them mine?

I immediately called my friend Pamela Daly and told her that
lounging next to my soft leathery-skinned suitors were a pair of
red boots from the 1950s in her size. Of course, Pamela knows I
would never lead her astray in matters of the heart or wallet, so
she dropped what she was doing and galloped out to the gallery and
claimed those deliciously decadent Valentine-red beauties. Pamela's
delectable pair with the starburst-pattern tops is featured in the
photograph.

The history of vintage cowboy boots is as romantic as the boots
themselves. Each pair has a story to tell. As Tyler Beard wrote in
his celebrated book Cowboy Boots: "For millennia, horsemen have
relied on protective footwear. Man, his boots, and the horse have
been inexorably linked in history, legend, myth and our
imaginations."

The style of boots from the 1870s came from an adaptation of the
Wellington and military boots worn by those fortunate enough to be
able to afford boots during the Civil War. By the 1880s, a more
traditional style was developed with a stovetop boot shaft, some
simple decorations and a higher heel.

The most influential pre-1900 bootmakers were Charles Hyer of
Olathe, Kan., and Joe Justin of Spanish Fort, Texas, 90 miles
northwest of Denton.

After the turn-of-the-century, Italian bootmakers Tony Lama and
the Lucchese family and the Hyer Brothers, with the introduction of
the toe-wrinkle (the straight or curved stitched lines across the
top of the foot), made their brand on the industry.

The popularity of Western radio and movie stars and cowboy
crooners from the 1920s through the 1950s such as Roy Rogers and
Dale Evans, Hoot Gibson, Tom Mix, William S. Hart, Hank Williams
Sr. and Gene Autry took wearing cowboy boots from the silver screen
to become a fashion statement among regular folks.

Bootmakers produced millions of pairs of boots to satisfy this
yearning of fans to imitate America's favorite stars. The period
from 1940 until 1965 is considered the Golden Age of cowboy
bootmaking. Then along came John Wayne in the 1960s, Urban Cowboy
starring John Travolta in the 1980s. Tyler Beard calls the late
1980s and early 1990s a period of the "retro-cowboy-boot stampede"
with vintage boot stores in New York and California causing
resurgence in boot wearing and bootmaking. No doubt about it,
cowboy boots have attitude.

Incidentally, Pamela and I strutted our stuff at the Fort Worth
Stock Show and Rodeo, and would you believe it - true to Al's words
- two tall drinks of water moseyed up to us and said in voices
straight out of a Western bodice-ripper, "Nice boots." So guys and
gals, hurry on out to the Western Heritage Gallery and pick up your
next romantic fling. Yee-haw!

GEORGIA CARAWAY is executive director of the Texas Institute of
Antiques & Collectibles and owner of enVogue & Vintage at
Western Heritage Gallery in Denton. Her book, "Tips, Tools &
Techniques to Care for Antiques, Collectibles and Other Treasures"
will be published by UNT Press in April.

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